Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Last year, I wrote an article introducing how Azuki became a contributor to Animecoin and AnimeChain, which is its Anime Part of the 2.0 project, which aims to build a new type of open anime world.

Not surprisingly, I noted at the time that the launch of this token and network could be a huge catalyst for the Azuki ecosystem.

Fast forward to today and we finally know a little more about the $ANIME token.

Over the weekend, the Animecoin team announced that it will launch its $ANIME Token Generation Event (TGE) later this month.

As the creator explains:

“ANIME is a cultural currency – a movement to transform one billion anime fans into a community-owned creative network. Here , passion becomes power, cultural energy becomes real value, and the boundaries between consumers and creators disappear." As for token economics, we know that the total supply will. is 10 billion, of which the initial circulating $ANIME is 7.69 billion.

The token will also be launched on Ethereum and Arbitrum, with allocations as follows:

The 37.5% allocated to Azuki community holders is quite impressive of. In comparison, 25.9% of the recent $PENGU airdrop was allocated to Pudgy Penguin community holders.

Also worth noting:

24.44% of $ANIME will be distributed to the Animecoin Foundation to support the development of the ecosystem

13% will be through AnimeDAO Access to community-managed vaults

2% will be spent on partner projects such as Arbitrum, Hyperliquid and Kaito Community

While no exact release date has been announced yet, there is no doubt that this drop will be significant.

For example, the current market cap of the Pudgy Penguins NFT is $610 million, while the market cap of the new $PENGU token has climbed to $1.8 billion - the more fungible, the more holders, Right.

By analogy, the current market value of Azuki NFT is $414 million. As a rough estimate, if $ANIME follows $PENGU's early growth trajectory, it could reach a $1.2 billion market cap in its first month.

This brings us to the question of the long-term outlook.

The thing about $ANIME is that its creators envision it not only as a token for the Azuki ecosystem, but as a rising community token for the entire global anime fan base.

It’s ambitious to say the least, but this is the Anime 2.0 master plan, anchored by the upcoming AnimeChain pillars powered by $ANIME, anime.com and Arbitrum Orbit center.

Big idea?

Building an ecosystem that allows fans to raise funds on-chain to co-create new anime worlds, so they can jointly own the intellectual property and profit as a community from any related releases .

We will see how this vision pans out, but there is no doubt there will be demand. There are more than 1 billion animation viewers worldwide, and the global animation market currently exceeds US$50 billion.

If $ANIME and its surrounding infrastructure can make headway here, and the popularity of anime in general continues to rise, this community token could become a mainstay among the top 100 cryptocurrencies in the long term.

In the meantime, we have to wait for the release date to be announced. For now, stay tuned to see how the main Azuki series performs ahead of the much-anticipated airdrop.